What Do You Do If You Are Missing A W-2?

Have you filed your taxes yet? If you answered no because you have not received your W-2 yet, don’t wait until the last minute before taking care of this.

Hello, this is Noel Dalmacio, your ultimate CPA at lowermytaxnow.

Here are few things you can do if your W-2 hasn’t arrived yet:

Contact your employer if you don’t receive your W-2 one week after the January 31st

If you have not received your W-2 by end of February, you can call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 to confirm if your W-2 has been downloaded already in the IRS database. Before calling the IRS though, make sure you have the following info ready:

Name, address and telephone no.

SSN

Dates of employment

Employer’s name, address, and telephone no.

Once you provided all the info, the IRS will contact your employer directly to request a replacement copy on your behalf.

Prepare IRS form 4852 – if you don’t receive the missing info and cannot get a correct form from your employer, you can reconstruct the wages and tax withholding on Form 4852 based from your check stubs and attach it to your return. Form 4852 serves a substitute for your missing W-2. After September 30th, you need to check your social security statement online by going to SSA.gov/myaccount. If the earnings on Form 4852 are not shown, contact the Social Security Administration (SSA) office.

If you received a copy of your W-2 after you filed your taxes, then you have to compare the W-2 info you reported vs the one showing in the official W-2. If there were changes, you can amend your return to reflect the correct numbers by filing Form 1040X.

So to recap, if you have a missing W-2, make sure you take the necessary steps in order to avoid IRS issues

If you like to learn more, click the link lowermytaxnow.com and sign-in to receive my weekly blog.

Until then, this is Noel Dalmacio, your ultimate CPA at lowermytaxnow.com.